One of the most important principles of organizing a volunteer movement (group) is that it is unhelpful and even harmful to fit people to ideas, to “events” and even more so to “reports. Volunteering is viable only in a space of trust, including professional trust. There should not be a “power vertical,” but a partnership.

Volunteering cannot be built from above or engineered. It is always life, because in essence it is mercy, it is a response of the heart to someone else’s pain, suffering, hope. Volunteerism is defined by a certain mystery, by a certain uncertainty, by the unspecified nature of the form and even of the content that is born in the heart of each volunteer. The heart cannot be commanded, it opens itself as it knows. And it is this mystery that makes volunteerism a miracle of service, makes it the embodiment of the human will for good. This is where the mystery of volunteer energy is rooted.

Volunteers are often people seeking self-actualization, fellowship with like-minded people, professional growth, they seek an environment of support, understanding and leisure. They are those who have found a delicate balance between their desire to earn a living, their career, etc., and their desire to serve their neighbors, to do something good. The work of such people can be organised only thanks to the great flexibility of the management system and non-resistance to their initiatives (provided that the initiatives do not contradict the mission of the organisation and the established rules). It is impossible or almost impossible to convey the task and the solution expected by the management to the volunteers-executives at once.